Chandigarh, July 02: Rashtriya Lok Dal today accused the BJP led NDA government of being apathetic towards problems faced by farmers and alleged that it was appeasing the rich people and monopoly houses by overlooking the farmers' interests. "During my stint as agriculture minister in the BJP led government, I found that it was busy in appeasing those who already have at the cost of those who badly need help from the government," RLD president Ajit Singh told reporters here.
He said confrontation with BJP over the farmers issue had reached a crescendo which forced him to quit as Union agriculture minister recently.
"They (BJP) disliked my speaking about protecting the interests of our farmers. They wanted to go ahead and scrap the minimum support price mechanism, but I protested and said this will break the farmers' back. I said that last year's July had been driest in many states in the past 127 years and the drought relief should be increased, but they had other commitments which took priority over farmers interests," Singh alleged.
He said only Rs 2201.73 crore had been paid to 18 states as drought relief from the national calamity contingency fund. "On the other hand IDBI and IFCCI advanced loans worth Rs 2800 crore last year to industries and likewise UTI got a phenomenal sum, but considering the catastrophe farmers faced they got peanuts," he alleged.
Bureau Report